The Northmen
Rulers of the black forests across the immense Arkalon River, the Northmen (or “Axe Men”) have been the perpetual enemies and uneasy neighbours of the Divine Empire for hundreds of years. Their Kingdom is the mainland, a generous chunk of land joined to the Empire’s holdings by the Arkalon, and the seven islands north of that mainland, situated in the frigid North Sea. The people of this cold, lush land are the descendants of warring clans that have been at each other’s throats for centuries, before the rise of the senate system united their shoguns under one roof. Now, the senatorial class gather on the largest island, Hoshami Island, in their capital city, to administer the nation. Made up of elected representatives from every island, clan, shogunate and city, the Senate vote on matters under the leadership of the Grand Shogun, who is elected every six years. The starkly white, brown-haired people of the nation have taken well to the sea, and are natural sailors, fishermen, whalers – and pirates. As a nation, they vastly prefer to fight on foot, as their densely forested and freezing holdings have little opportunity for grazing, and the islands are not large enough in any case for cavalry to become a viable method of waging war. They use a lot of steel, paired with materials taken from the sea, such as whalebone and shark skin, in their weapons, armour and tools, along with their unimaginably large sources of wood from the black forests. Their weapons steel is of poor quality, but is hammered, folded and pattern-welded many times to produce a blade of surpassing quality, making it just poorer than a damascus sword. This steel is expensive, so the swords are carried only by the warrior elite. Levies must make do with poor-quality steel, but it’s better than no steel at all – and at least it is plentiful. Society Their boat-cabins, longhouses and fortresses are decorated with silk-paintings, wood carvings and jade statues, and are usually decorated with a carved serpent figurehead projecting on both sides from the central roof-beam. Their houses and boats are entirely wooden, with stone used only for the castles of shoguns, the walls of their fortified docks and cities, and the Senate House itself. The land is worked by peasants – people born into servitude, who have the opportunity to learn a trade such as smithing and shipbuilding, or to work their ancestral lands, or become boat crews. There is no professional army, but each shogun can offer his people incentives, financial or otherwise, to train in the arts of war. If the senate demands it, all men of fighting age must join the army, and the competitive and one-upping nature of the shoguns with their neighbours means the peasants are usually quite capable soldiers when called. The warrior elite (or “Oathsworn”) are the backbone of the civilisation in the North. Usually physically larger and stronger than the peasants, they are trained from a very young age and conditioned for utter physical and psychological perfection. Devoted to their master on pain of death, and very willing to carry that sentence out on themselves if they disobey or otherwise shame their master, they are also a self-policing unit – a shamed Oathsworn who refuses to restore his honour will have it restored for him when his former comrades hunt him down. The Oathsworn The Oathsworn fight with a range of weapons, but do not carry shields. They believe that a sharp mind and good use of a weapon is shield enough – and that if they shy from the enemy, they are cowards in any case. This flowery and courageous-sounding rationale is more accurately the result of the forests of their native lands being too dense to adequately allow the Oathsworn to lug shields around as quickly as they like to move. They do, however, wear full armour, usually of overlapping plates of steel that are patterned in such a way as to tell the warrior’s achievements and life story. The ensemble is usually topped with a full-face helmet forged to look like a snarling demon or sea monster. The Oathsworn fight in small units of one to fifteen men, considering more to be a burden rather than a help. Their fighting style is fast and aggressive, but with the amount of training backing them, it can afford to be. Moving quickly on foot, they always open the fight by throwing their two throwing-axes, then close to melee drawing their swords. They always carry two – either a sun-sword and shortsword, or a horsecutter and shortsword. The horsecutters are the Oathsworn’s answer to cavalry. A large, two-handed sword with a distinct knifelike curve to the blade, the handle is a full four feet long, making the entire weapon 8 feet in length. The Oathsworn use it when on the mainland or raiding, to cut the legs out from under charging horses. The extended reach also allows them generous opportunity to attack a stalled cavalryman himself. Many of the most powerful shoguns have hundreds or thousands of Oathsworn at their disposal – and even one is a problem for enemy forces. Government The Shoguns are the governors of each province of Northman land. Required to sit the Senate at least 4 sessions per year and send a trusted replacement to every missed session, most of them split their time quite evenly between the Senate and their home regions, usually leaving their brothers, fathers, other trusted relatives or their most trusted and senior Oathsworn to take their place at other times. Women may not sit in the Senate, and are not represented there in any capacity. The Senate also holds hearings of trade guilds and public figures when necessary, and holds the trials of those accused of treason or other suitably spectacular crimes. Warfare A typical Oathsworn sun-sword is around four feet long, with a straight double-edged blade ending in a very fine point. The blades are narrow and perfectly balanced for theatrical flourishes and flexible guards sometimes seen in Oathsworn fighting, and have a small tsuba-like guard above the two-handed handgrip. The handle is usually covered in carefully plaited ribbon, then interweaving strips of treated sharkskin, rayskin or other tough, rough material. The pommels are usually adorned with the Oathsworn’s name or sigil in brass, and the steel of the blade is heat-treated until it has a golden sheen. The intricate pattern-weld between the soft core steel of the blade and the much harder tamehagane edge-steel can usually be seen. The horsecutters use the same pattern-welding technique, but not the heat-treating, and they are almost invariably single-edged. The four-foot blade is usually around the thickness of a man’s thumb at the spine, tapering towards the tip, and before the knifelike tapering begins, it is usually broader than a man’s hand. The blade is tapered in such a way as to remain strong and project the cutting edge all the way to the tip of the weapon, as it is used to cut the legs out from under charging horses with sweeping horizontal slashes and diagonal looping cuts, or to kill the rider with a vertical chop or spear-like two-handed thrust. Like the sun-swords, they contain much of the wielder’s personality, with engraved pommels and intricately-woven handle-wrappings. The handle-wrapping on a horsecutter tends to be of ribbon, buckskin or other smooth materials in the top two-thirds of the handle nearest the blade, transitioning into sharkskin or rayskin in the bottom third closest to the pommel. This is so the Oathsworn’s lead hand can slide down to the bottom third of the blade easily when making a high-speed two-handed slash, much the way a person’s hand slides on an axe handle when they are cutting a tree down. Their peasant soldiers, or ashigaru, are armed according to their shogun, and are usually equipped with nine-foot spears, bows, knives and axes. Every one of their warriors carries at least a long hatchet, but long-handled bearded axes (sometimes called a “hand and a half axe” as they can be used either one- or two-handed) is the most common weapon. The long beards of these axes make them excellent choices for pulling aside enemy shields and weapons, ship-work, and clearing the heavy brush and fallen trees of their woodland territories. The heavy heads make short work of enemy shields and armour. An axeman always carries a spear or bow as his primary weapon, using the axe in close combat as a secondary weapon, and relying on his knife as an emergency backup. Some ashigaru, dedicated “wall men,” are equipped with shields instead of spears or bows, and are used as an anvil upon which the Oathsworn hammer can smash the enemy – however, the very mobile nature of Northmen armies means they are used very infrequently. A solid cuirass of layered, lacquered steel is the preferred method of protecting an ashigaru footsoldier, with a chainmail skirt, lacquered shin-guards and steel helmets with horns and masks being common to the ashigaru of wealthier or more warlike shoguns. Appearance Physically, the Northmen are tall and broad, generally standing taller and heavier than Imperials, but are still humans, so there is considerable physical overlap. They are very pale-skinned, and have blonde and brown hair. Blue or green eyes are most common, with occasional brown. Their clothes are optimised to protect against the freezing cold and heavy rain of their homes, made of layers of dyed linens, silks and wools. Heavy coats of hybrid fabrics are sometimes worn, but fur is considered primitive and tasteless, and is therefore a rarity. When at sea, protection from the elements is even more important. Their seafarers tend to wear sealskin over their clothes, and occasionally cover all with a large poncho or sealskin or oiled linen. Sea-Raiders Their raiders and naval forces are peerless, and are kept out of Imperial waters only by the large numbers of Divine Empire triremes and their smaller, faster assault ships. The longboats are crewed entirely by professional sailors, the vast majority of which will make up part of the raiding force and all of whom will be armed. This is a double-edged sword for them, as their ships do not carry any excess weight – there are no slaves toiling at the oars as on an Imperial trireme, hauling a mass of soldiers as well as their own weight, but on an Imperial ship the slaves mean the soldiers need focus only on fighting, and are always fresh. Although in peak physical condition, the oarsmen on a Northern boat are too often exhausted from hours of rowing in pursuit to be effective when the fighting starts. As well as the professional oarsmen, a Northern longboat carries a number of other crew, like a navigator, quartermaster, captain, spotter, drummer and guards. On a warship, many of these guards will be Oathsworn, and they act as beachhead-makers when the raid begins. On a trading ship, only one or two guards are onboard, and they are rarely, if ever, a shogun’s precious Oathsworn. On a warship or shogun-sanctioned raider, many, many more warriors are carried, and there may be as many as a dozen Oathsworn on every ship. Rightfully so, the tall, square sails of a Northman ship are a terrifying sight for foreign coastal villages, whether they have a garrison or not. Ashigaru raiding with spears, bows and axes is one thing for an Imperial cohort to deal with – several dozen Oathsworn bringing their legendary swords to bear, backed by a division of bloodthirsty oarsmen – that is a different matter.